AN NCS PREMIERE: CARCINOID — “MORBID CURSE”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 022023
 

The last time we premiered music from the Australian death metal band Carcinoid was four years ago, the occasion being the run-up toward their album Metastatic Declination. Back then we urged you to “prepare your hardened ears for a mutated offspring of death and doom that’s as foul as a rotting corpse, as punishing as a jackhammer applied to the spine, and as horrifying as a runaway cancer”.

Since then Carcinoid have released a couple of splits, and now they’re returning with a new record named Encomium to Extinction, which brings five new tracks and nearly half an hour of total music, thanks to an evil conspiracy between Me Saco Un Ojo Records and Headsplit Records.

Once again we have a premiere, and this time our best advice is to get your fucking necks loose. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DETHRONED — “VINUM CREATURAE”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 022023
 

The world inexorably revolves around the sun, and in time what was old sometimes becomes new again. So it is with the German black metal band Dethroned, a group whose roots stretch back to 1993 with the band Mysticism (and then became Dethroned in 1995).

Since then Dethroned‘s progression has been a continuing story of silence and revival, but beginning in 2016 their releases have become somewhat more consistent, with a debut album in 2017 (Bluotrunst), an EP in 2020 (Christentod), and now a second album named A Bridge to Eternal Darkness that’s set for release on December 1st by Dominance of Darkness Records.

What we have for you today is the premiere of “Vinum Creaturae“, the second song to be revealed so far from the upcoming album. In the video accompanying the song, lightning flashes and storm waves crest and crash against a rocky shore. When you listen to the music, you’ll understand the choice of those visuals. Continue reading »

TITO’S WEEKLY METAL RECS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Nov 022023
 

Our friend Tito Vespasiani from Everlasting Spew Records (and other metal endeavors) is back with another weekly playlist of recommended heavy songs. This second one, like the first one last week, includes 20 tracks, with commentary about a few of them below. The full stream is at the end, and on Spotify here.

Defleshed – Grind Over Matter

Defleshed is BACK!

“Who?” Some fans out there could say. Oh come on, DEFLESHED! Under the Blade! One of the best thrashy death bands ever, grindy at times (like in this album) and one of the most aggressive and crushing bands as always. Continue reading »

ROSA FAENSKAP – JEG BLIR TIL DEG

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Nov 012023
 

(Andy Synn offers his effusive recommendation for the debut album of Norway’s Rosa Faenskap)

While common wisdom will tell you that making music isn’t a competition – in that you’re not directly trying to “beat” other bands – that assertion doesn’t necessarily tell the full story.

Make no mistake about it, being in a band means that you are, inevitably, “competing” in some way for people’s attention, for opportunities, for coverage and column inches… all of which, like it or not, are limited resources. In the end, there’s only so much of them to go around.

Case in point, while multiple outlets were quick (perhaps a little too quick) to heap praise upon Agriculture‘s self-titled album earlier this year (although my/our review was a little more critical than most) there’s been much less written about Jeg blir til deg, the certifiably unorthodox and certain-to-be-divisive debut from Norwegian trio Rosa Faenskap.

Which is a damn shame because, out of the two bands, it’s the latter who arguably deserve, and live up to, all the hype.

Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): PA VESH EN — “CATACOMBS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 012023
 

In the late spring of this year the Belarusian raw black metal band Pa Vesh En released its fourth album Martyrs. Ever-prolific, Pa Vesh En is already returning with a fifth album, this newest one named Catacombs, and it’s being released today by Inferna Profundus Records.

What Pa Vesh En does from album to album is never entirely predictable, but one can predict that whatever variations might be introduced, the results will still be frightening, and so it is with Catacombs. Continue reading »

FOREVER PLAYING CATCH UP (2023 EDITION) PART 2

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Nov 012023
 

(Our old friend and former NCS writer Austin Weber is returning to our page today with the second part of a multi-part series of reviews that we plan to run day after day until completed. You’ll find Part 1 here.)

Despite the incredible volume of music covered here at NCS, there remains a plethora of noteworthy releases yet to be shared in this space. Chalk it up to how much damn good stuff deserves the limelight and doesn’t get it because we all know this site already covers more than most as is.

As I’ve done in the past, join me for another multi-part feature that touches on music I strongly believe you should listen to—or at the very least, stuff worth checking out at a minimum. You be the judge. Onwards! Continue reading »

CRYSTAL COFFIN: “THE CURSE OF IMMORTALITY”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Nov 012023
 

(Didrik Mešiček wrote the following review of the third album by the Vancouver-based trio Crystal Coffin, which was just released yesterday.)

In my continued search for black metal that’s not quite the typical ’90s second wave sound that we all love/hate (choose whichever applies to you) I’m often intrigued by qualifying words like melodic, symphonic, or folky before the name of the subgenre. This time it’s the Canadian Crystal Coffin that’s caught my attention, a band that supposedly falls into the melodic group, if Metal Archives are to be believed. Their new album, The Curse of Immortality, will be released independently on the 31st of October, two years after the band’s previous album, The Starway Eternal, and that’s what I’ll be talking about today.  Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT (PART 164): PHANTOM WINTER

 THE SYNN REPORT  No Responses »
Oct 312023
 

Recommended for fans of: Body Void, Lord Mantis, Amenra

If you’ve been following the site for any length of time, chances are you’ve seen us heaping praise on Germany’s Phantom Winter, whose signature sound – an ear-scraping, heart-breaking blend of sickening Sludge and savage Black Metal, doomy Post-Metal dynamics and sinister, drone-infused atmospherics which the band themselves have playfully dubbed “Winterdoom” – has been terrorising audiences since 2015.

And with the group’s latest album, Her Cold Materials, having just been released last week now seemed like the perfect time to feature their full discography and, hopefully, bring their music o the attention of even more potential listeners.

Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): AEONIAN SORROW — “KATARA”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  1 Response »
Oct 312023
 

In the Pindus mountains of northern Greece there is a pass called Katara. We are told that according to the legend, “Katara got its name from a despot who around 1800 set out from Ioannina to go to Trikala city, but the bad weather in the area made it so difficult for him that he died on the way and he cursed the mountain”.

Many tragic stories have been written about this pass, and the Greek/Finnish doom-metal collective Aeonian Sorrow have now written their own, although their new album Katara, which will be released tomorrow, includes other stories as well — and it is dedicated to the memory of Georgia and Michail, beloved grandparents of the band’s singer Gogo Melone.

The lyric stories included in Katara do vary across the album’s seven substantial songs, all of them heart-felt, but they are stories of deep loss, despair, and anger — heart-breaking and harrowing, as well as heart-felt. Gogo has explained how they all came to be: Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: GODTHRYMM

 Interviews  No Responses »
Oct 312023
 


photo by Frank Ralph

(In mid-August Profound Lore Records released Distortions, a new album by British doom metallers Godthrymm, and today we present Comrade Aleks‘ interview with two members of the band, Hamish Glencross and Shaun Taylor-Steels.)

The name Godthrymm is familiar to many, and doom fans couldn’t help but hear how this UK-based band fired off one after another top-notch EPs A Grand Reclamation (2018) and Dead in the Studio (2019), and then struck with an epic full-length manifesto, Reflections (2020).

Their traditional, epic-oriented doom metal has deep roots. The singing guitarist Hamish Glencross went through the universities of My Dying Bride and Vallenfyre. The drummer Shaun Taylor-Steels played not only with the Brides, but also with Anathema. And if we dig deeper, we can easily find that both of them studied the basics of doom back in the ’90s, as part of the ever-memorable Solstice team.

Hamish and Shaun, along with bassist Sasquatch Bob and Hamish‘s wife, Catherine, who this time sings and plays keyboards, returned this August with a new album, Distortions.

(This interview was conducted shortly before the release of the album and was first published in the Spanish metal-magazine This Is Metal.) Continue reading »

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